My acquaintance with the works of Marcel Schutzenberger
(apologies for not bothering with the umlaut) is pretty
limited. I've read various items available in English on the
WWW, and his contributions to the mid-60's Wistar conference.
I can readily accept that Schutzenberger is well-regarded in
his specialty. However, this does not necessarily translate
into good critiques of biology.
In taking apart Wilder-Smith's use of Schutzenberger's
statements at the Wistar conference, I ended up critiquing
Schutzenberger as well. See
<http://inia.cls.org/~welsberr/zgists/wre/papers/ntse_wre100.html>.
His claim that simulations of natural selection necessarily
"jam" computers was addressed and disposed of in the
discussion period, though Marcel declined to credit that
another researcher might have succeeded where he had failed.
Certainly the further work of Holland and others in
evolutionary computation showed that Schutzenberger's
pronouncement of failure for such computational endeavors was
misguided. It is interesting, though, just how often
Schutzenberger's claim from the Wistar conference discounting
evolutionary computation shows up in anti-evolutionary
literature as if it still had some validity.
I'll note that there is not complete agreement on this issue.
Murray Eden, another Wistar participant, held that genetic
algorithms did not set aside Schutzenberger's critiques when I
corresponded with him on the topic. We did not pursue the
discussion beyond that, so I'm still unsure of what part of
Schutzenberger's critique might be held to be valid despite
the advances in evolutionary computation that have ensued.
Wesley
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